Fergal Dunne

On Painting
Painting utilises a particular language of conscious application and decision making. Abstracted from the exercise of articulating particular forms as they would appear in real life, the brushstrokes, colour, and material flatness speak to a visual consciousness sourced in our experiences that geographically, physically, and culturally affect upon us a particular feeling and sensation that, given a context, can act politically, poetically, and socially.

Enkephalin, a neurological hormone, directs upon the body chemical warning messages, and the regulation of pain, or damage prevention.
Such a function of the body speaks of the notion of self-preservation and survival mechanisms; facets of evolution and a system of competition and survival-of-the-fittest.
In the context of contemporary human society, however, such a concept displays language of ruthlessness, callousness, and apparent cold-blooded selfishness. Further, in the Western philosophical tradition, humans have been validated as compassionate, self-conscious, intellectual beings that transcend the animalistic instincts mentioned categorised as ‘of the body’ leading to a demonisation of bodiliness and notions of selffulness that would suggest against the decided conceptualisation of the Human as divine or transcendent.
It is thus, as a result of inherited attitudes and concepts towards a contestable concept of the ‘Human’, that the chemical neurology with which our bodies dictate our lives so foundationally presents such a challenge to our perception of the world, our understanding of what it means to be a ‘human’, and the relations between people and peoples and the judgements and conflicts that arise.

Proceeding further into the terrain of globalisation while still carrying the baggage of humanist, Western, enlightenment ideology, presents fundamental ethical, cultural, and political questions over the state of things to come and the potential forseeable consequences, conflicts, and disasters.